Death at Swaythling Court

by J. J. Connington

  “And all that talk of yours about cyanide in the stomach was rubbish?”

  “Squidge of the worst.”

  The Colonel leaned back in his chair. He was ashamed to admit how completely Jimmy had taken him in and how much thought he had spent on the connection between the Lethal Ray and Hubbard’s death. So far as he was concerned, the “false trail” had been a complete success.

  “It took Hubbard in completely,” Jimmy Leigh continued. “We needed to put him off his guard, so I approached him and asked him to finance me in the Lethal Ray affair. That made him think I knew nothing about the business of Stella and so I could fix up friendly meetings with him. We needed that for the plan. He took it that Stella had been afraid to tell me anything.”

  Cyril Norton took up his narrative once more.

  “Then we hit on the notion of a fake blackmail case. That was to strengthen the false trail, supply some reason why Jimmy should want to get Hubbard out of the way.”

  “You weren’t blackmailed at all, Jimmy?” demanded the Colonel. “That took me in completely, I admit.”

  “Character white as the driven snow, Colonel. See how the best of us are misunderstood. I wouldn’t have swallowed a tale like that about you on such flimsy evidence.”

  The Colonel grunted non-committally. Jimmy’s irony touched him on a sore spot.

  “We faked up that correspondence I showed you,” continued Cyril Norton. “Thank the Lord for the typewriter, it saves any bother about handwriting. We bought an extra shuttle for Jimmy’s ‘Hammond’; chipped a bit off the letters here and there—the defective ‘d’s,’ you remember—to make it distinctive; typed out all the stuff on Jimmy’s machine and stored the shuttle for future use.”

  The Colonel was seeing light on a number of dark places.

  “So that’s the explanation? I couldn’t understand how Hubbard’s letter to Stella had no defective ‘d’ in it.”

  Cyril and Jimmy Leigh exchanged a glance.

  “You noticed that?” Cyril inquired.

  “Yes. But I couldn’t fit it in.”

  “H’m! We shouldn’t have left that loose end, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy Leigh nodded acquiescence.

  “We ought to have snaffled that letter to Stella, if we’d really been careful,” he commented. “Well, no harm’s done. We’ll do better next time, perhaps.”

  “Any point I’ve missed, Jimmy?” asked Cyril Norton.

  “The cyanide and the paraldehyde, I think.”

  “Oh, yes, they’d slipped my memory. I bought them in town. Quite untraceable, I’m sure.”

  He reflected for a moment or two.

  “No, I think that’s all. I’ve given you the scaffolding of the scheme, anyway. The only thing that remained was to get at Hubbard when he was alone. We had a tip fixed up to manage that; but as it so happened, Hubbard himself played right into our hands. He wrote that letter to Stella. If I’d had any scruples before, that epistle washed them away. Anybody could see what he was after.”

  The Colonel’s face showed that he understood; and Cyril Norton avoided stressing the point.

  “That letter told us that Hubbard’s staff would be off the premises at eleven o’clock. All we had to do was to make a few inquiries—easy enough in the village here—and find out exactly when the servants were leaving the house. That was an easy business. We found that after about 7.30 the coast would be clear. That meant running things fine enough; but we couldn’t afford to miss the chance; it might not recur in a hurry. So at eight o’clock or a little before it, I was at Hubbard’s front door, ringing like blazes to make sure of waking him up. I’d left my motor-cycle parked just off the road at the edge of the Swaythling grounds, near the turn-off to Micheldean Abbas. Under my overalls I had on a short coat and black tie, as I meant to go on to the Allinghams’ and play bridge that evening.”

  Cyril Norton threw away the stump of his cigar and chose a fresh one with some care. Then he took up his narrative again.

  “Hubbard came to the door himself; and that satisfied me he was alone in the house. I played the terror-stricken victim pretty well: just learned what was happening, would pay anything if only he’d keep his mouth shut, made it appear that he would be doing me a personal favour by almost bankrupting me. I think I did it fairly well, considering that it isn’t a pose that came naturally to me just then.

  “My throat got dry with talking—very soon; and I begged for a drink. (I ought to say I kept my gauntlets on all the time, too worried to think of the ordinary decencies, you see). To show there was no ill-feeling, Hubbard got out a second tumbler and poured out the stuff for us both. As soon as he’d done that, I wanted to see the affidavit, of course; and while he was at the safe getting hold of it—he must have judged me a pitiable creature or he’d never have let me see where he kept his stuff—I tilted a stiff dose of paraldehyde into his tumbler. He took one long drink, and before I expected it he was asleep in his chair. That stuff acts like magic.”

  The Colonel was plainly puzzled by his nephew’s story.

  “What did you want with the paraldehyde? You could have put cyanide into his drink just as easily then and finished him.”

  “Quite true. But you must remember I had two things to think about: other people, and myself. I meant to make a clean sweep of all his compromising documents so that none of the poor devils who were under his thumb would suffer by my interrupting his career. That meant spending some time in burning his papers. But that meant the chance that someone might drop in and catch me at the work. Suppose someone had turned up, what would the state of affairs have been? Hubbard was asleep and I was burning his papers. Do you think he’d have dared to make a fuss and chance his blackmailing coming out? Not he. So I could safely go that length, so long as he was alive. But so long as he was alive he was a danger to Stella, so he wasn’t going to wake up out of that sleep.

  “To continue. I burned every scrap of paper in the safe. I piled up the fire until it was a regular furnace—heaped on coal as if I’d been a stoker. To tell the truth, I didn’t much care whether I set the house on fire or not; it might have been better to do that, but then there’d have been the risk of someone rushing up and rescuing him. Then I left the fake letter on his desk—the one warning him I meant to apply for a warrant. And I clipped the fragmentary threatening letter to Jimmy into his ‘Hammond’ machine and substituted the chipped shuttle for his own one, which I put in the fire after breaking off the metal clip on it.

  “That brought me near the end of things. I put out the killing-bottle I’d brought in my pocket—laid it on the desk handy for him. I collected his stick, the one with the silver name-plate on it, from his stand in the hall. And then I gave him a dose of cyanide solution I’d brought in my pocket. I didn’t want any struggle, so I gave him it through the nose with a rubber tube and a filler—forcible feeding you see. He took it without a squeak—simplest thing in the world. And that was the end of Master Hubbard’s career. That was about half-past eight—quick work, I think. By the way, I forgot to mention that I washed out my tumbler and put it back on the pantry rack before I dosed him.

  “Now came the time when I had to hurry. This was the danger-period if anyone happened to come to the door. I left the light on in the study—a man doesn’t switch off the light when he’s going to suicide, you know—and I left the light on in the hall as well. Then I decamped, and made for the Bungalow, one-time.”

  Jimmy Leigh propped himself up in his chair and took up the narrative where Cyril Norton dropped it.

  “And meanwhile, Colonel, where was our hero all this while? Dining with you, moving in the highest circles, and quite safe with an alibi. I can’t say that I was exactly bubbling with animal spirits that evening; you may have noticed that I was somewhat distrait, wrapped in gloomy thought, so to speak, and parlant à tort et à travers, as our French pals have it. In fact, I was a bit worried and not feeling particularly rambunctious.”

  “I noticed it,” confirmed the Col
onel, “but I put it down to your coming interview with Hubbard at the Bungalow.”

  “At 8.30 p.m., I relieved you by taking myself off and buzzed all out for the Bungalow. Cyril arrived almost at once; and between us we put up a fine imitation of Hubbard coming to pay me a visit—for Mrs. Pickering’s benefit. Cyril slammed Hubbard’s stick into the stand in the hall—where she found it next morning according to plan—and then I dispatched her out to post a letter (see evidence under oath at inquest). As soon as she was out of the road, Cyril cut his stick and picked up his motor-bike, which took him to the Allinghams’ in nice time for the start of the bridge party.”

  Jimmy Leigh blew a long puff of smoke as though to put a period to this phase of the night’s operations.

  “Don’t tell me that murder is an easy stunt. I know better. While Mrs. Pickering was out, I started the gramophone record of that long conversation I’d had with Hubbard; so when she came back again she heard it in full swing. I tell you, Colonel, it was a trying evening. I had to use that record over and over again; and I had to vary the running each time so as not to let it get monotonous, for fear she’d spot it. Between times, I eked out the record with a musical programme—arias and squeaks by James Leigh the well-known basso falsetto. I was supposed to be amusing Hubbard, of course. I

  Played him a sonata—let me see!

  Medulla oblongata—key of G.

  I certainly remember singing Offenbach’s Barcarolle, you know, ‘Night of stars and night of love.’ I thought that would impress itself on Mrs. Pickering; but the good lady never mentioned it in her evidence. Tone-deaf, probably—a sad case.”

  “Will you kindly get on with your story,” interrupted the exasperated Colonel, not without reason.

  “There, you’ve put me off—made me quite lose the thread,” complained Jimmy, plaintively. Then, seeing that he had exhausted Colonel Sanderstead’s patience, he continued:

  “Well, about half-past ten, I heard Mrs. Pickering retire to her cubby-hole to prepare for rest. Ten minutes later, I gave her an imitation of Hubbard leaving the house, with me falling on his neck in pure friendliness on the door-step. I came in again and shut the door with a good bang.”

  “So that accounts for Lonsdale’s Invisible Man!” commented Colonel Sanderstead, enlightened by the fresh facts. “Never mind about that,” he added, “I’ll explain what I mean later on. Get on with your story.”

  “The next thing was to put through that false telephone call and clinch the evidence of Hubbard’s being alive at 11 p.m. I had tapped old Swaffham’s wire as soon as his shop closed for the night—his line crosses my garden, you remember. And I had a dictaphone record of his voice, as Cyril told you. In fact, you were on the spot yourself when the record was taken, that morning when I swindled you over the Lethal Ray. It was dead lucky that I’m a whale on gramophones and so forth. It came in handy, didn’t it? Ave Scientia! as Flitterwick would say.

  “And now the labours of our hero were drawing near their close—like Lady Godiva at the end of that little spree of hers. All I had to do was to make as much rumbling as I could in here, to impress Mrs. Pickering with my presence. And I took the liberty of bracketing the Lethal Ray machine—I must have a laugh!—on Swaythling Court and adding the oriented map and compass just to top things off. I had hopes that good old Flitterwick would drop in, nose round in his usual way, and find ’em. Collateral evidence you know, to strengthen the false trail.”

  He lighted a fresh cigarette.

  “Well, that’s about all. Next morning I got up bright and early, scared Mrs. Pickering into fits with a sudden departure, galloped for the station and nearly missed the train through carelessness. I just managed to spring into a carriage as the thing slid out.”

  “Did you know your travelling-companion?” inquired the Colonel.

  “Who? I didn’t notice anyone in particular.”

  “Oh, Flitterwick will enlighten you,” Colonel Sanderstead assured him, silkily.

  Cyril Norton confirmed this with a nod.

  “The laugh’s on you, Jimmy, you’ll see soon enough,” he said. “Flitterwick thinks you’re immoral. And now, uncle,” he went on, “perhaps you’ll kindly give us the rest of the thing. You see how I was placed. I’d left everything neatly arranged to represent Hubbard’s suicide. Next morning I forced myself on you, because I meant to be on the spot when the discovery was made. I was afraid I’d overlooked some detail and I thought I might set it right if I got there along with you and Bolam. And of course I wanted to make sure that the windows were opened wide.”

  “What was the point in that, specially?” Colonel Sanderstead demanded.

  “To make sure that Mickleby was put off the scent, of course. You remember that it was a very cold morning? Now Hubbard’s body had been lying in front of a roaring fire most of the time since his death, and naturally the body-temperature hadn’t fallen at anything like the normal rate. I wanted to impress the idea of normal cooling on Mickleby; and the obvious thing to do was to get the windows open, let in the cold air, and trust that Mickleby wouldn’t have the sense to remember there had been a huge fire on during the night. If you hadn’t told Bolam to throw open the windows I’d have done it myself; but you saved me the trouble. And so when Mickleby came on the scene, the room was like an ice-house and he never thought of it having been any warmer. He just went home and looked up a book to find the ordinary rate at which a body cools after death, and then brought out the result in his evidence to prove that Hubbard died about midnight—post-dated the time by some hours, just as we wanted. Apart from that window business, the only thing that turned up was the belt-fastener you found on the floor. If I’d come across it myself I’d have pocketed it and said nothing.”

  “It was yours, then?”

  “Mine. Must have dropped it out of my overall pocket that night. But you got it; and I saw it could do no harm anyway, so I made no fuss about it.”

  “You acted pretty well, that morning,” commented Colonel Sanderstead. “You looked the most astonished of the three of us; and I would have taken my oath that you really hadn’t expected what we found.”

  “No more I did,” said Cyril Norton. “How would you feel if you’d left all the stage neatly arranged to point towards suicide—corpse included; and then you came back first thing the next morning and found somebody unknown had been at work after you and had staged an obvious murder—the very thing you’d done your best to avoid suggesting? Wouldn’t you have had a shock? And who the devil could it have been? I can tell you there was no acting about it: I was far more puzzled than you were, I’m sure. And I must have looked it.”

  “I hadn’t seen that side of it, of course,” admitted the Colonel. “It’s no wonder you were taken aback.”

  “You put it mildly,” said Cyril Norton, dryly. “I can tell you I did quite a lot of worrying on the subject of that unknown re-arranger. And what made it worse was that I daren’t try my hand at investigating the affair, except in the mildest way. I couldn’t afford to do anything that might suggest that there was a mystery at all, for fear some other person might get excited over it. That’s why I did my best to damp down your enthusiasm, uncle.”

  Colonel Sanderstead let this pass without comment.

  “By the way,” he inquired, “what about that bottle of paraldehyde they produced at the inquest? Was that really Hubbard’s; or did you plant it in the house as another bit of fabricated evidence.”

  “I forgot to mention that. Sorry!” Cyril Norton apologized. “No, it wasn’t Hubbard’s. I put it in his bedroom after I’d drugged him. Paraldehyde was sure to be found in the body, you know, if they did a P.M.; so one had to provide a supply on the premises if it was to look like a suicide case.”

  Jimmy Leigh broke into the conversation before the Colonel could say anything further.

  “What about my moral character? I’d like to hear the evidence.”

  Cyril Norton swung round in his chair.

  “I’ve gone into t
hat business as far as I could without raising too much of a dust; and what I make out of it is this: There was a Mrs. Vane, Jimmy—I suppose she had as much right to the ‘Mrs.’ as to the ‘Vane’ and not much claim on either of them. She turned up in Fernhurst Parva that night. Stayed at the ‘Three Bees.’ She was a friend of Hilton’s, I understand. They had a stormy interview on the road and, from Bolam’s account, I infer that she was going to see Hubbard for some purpose and Hilton headed her off. My reading of the thing is that Hubbard had learned of her connection with Hilton, had got into touch with her, and was going to double-cross everybody. He’d have sold his information to Hilton and got the divorce case smashed; then he’d have come to us, with this Vane woman, and offered us—for cash—enough evidence against Hilton to start a fresh divorce action. But that’s only my interpretation of the affair.”

  “And where do my morals come in?”

  “Flitterwick saw her waiting—for Hilton, probably—at the station next morning. You happened to travel in the same carriage as she did. That’s enough to settle your moral character in Flitterwick’s eyes. I understand she was the sort of female that rather draws the eye, you know.”

  “Oh,” commented Jimmy Leigh. “I promise myself something out of this next time I meet Flitterwick. I wonder if I’d look best as the indignant slanderee or the repentant sinner. H’m! a repentant sinner ought to have sack-cloth. I can do the slanderee character in ordinary clothes. That settles it.”

  Cyril Norton turned round to his uncle.

  “I think, now, we’ve told you everything we can, all that matters, anyway. But so far as we’re concerned, there’s a big hole in the yarn. Suppose you fill in the gaps for us, if you can.”

  Colonel Sanderstead, nothing loath, recounted the results of his investigations, but he was careful to omit all description of the various theories he had formed from time to time. He felt that in the circumstances Bolam’s objective method would be the best model for his narration. As a collector of facts, he had scored to some extent; but as a theorist and a detective, he had not much to boast about. When he admitted altering the Lethal Ray machine’s position, his guests exchanged a glance; and they received his account of his interference in Stella Hilton’s affairs with unconcealed satisfaction.